A Project of the University of Michigan Law School

Currently 1,570 Exonerations

John Fitzgerald

In January 2006, John Fitzgerald, a San Diego, California Certified Public Accountant, was arrested for filing false tax returns for a doctor client of his in 1998 and 1999. The doctor had pled guilty to evading federal income taxes; he testified at Fitzgerald’s trial that he believed a tax shelter devised by Fitzgerald was a sham. In January 2007, a jury convicted Fitzgerald of filing false tax returns.

After trial, it was discovered that prosecutors failed to disclose a recording of a conversation between the doctor and his tax attorney that contradicted the doctor’s testimony at Fitzgerald’s trial. A United States District Court granted Fitzgerald a new trial, and then dismissed the indictment altogether in February 2009. The prosecution did not appeal the dismissal.

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